MSI Z690 Tomahawk BIOS not seeing 10 TB HDD (BIOS UPDATED)

Another what should have been trivial turning into a major PITA! Well, maybe a SMALL PITA...

MSI Tomahawk with i9-12900 and so on. Backup drives are a pair of 8TB HDD that go into a removable carrier in the system. Every 2 weeks, shut down, pull one out, put other one in, boot system. Been working fine since day 1.

Get a pair of HGST 10TB HDD to replace the 8TB HDD. Put 10TB drive in EXTERNAL USB drive - WORKS FINE. Spins, formats, holds data.

Shut system down, put in internal carrier, reboot into BIOS, drive slot shows NO DRIVE. BIOS doesn't recognize it.

UPDATE BIOS to newest version. In a side note - I had forgotten that updating the BIOS makes the computer stupid again, and now I have to try to remember what I did 18 months ago for customization - I KNOW I used an XMP profile to bring the memory up to 3600 MHz... Anyhow, that's a side mess for AFTER I have the backup drives working.

SO, new BIOS, 10TB HDD in the carrier, BIOS doesn't see it, indows doesn't see it.

The 10TB drives don't have any jumpers on the pins (neither do the 8TB drives.

Removing the 10TB drive from the system and installing the 8TB drive - works fine.

In my research, I found some OLD topics in places that said you could do a couple things:

Use a Molex to SATA, or cut the 3.3v wire on the SATA cable of your PSU and heat shrink it up!


Am I correct that a "Molex" is the large white connected with 4 wires? If so, that's what the removable carrier in the system uses, so adapting it to the thin black connector (which I presume is the SATA), isn't going to help... BUT ALL THIS was in ANCIENT topics from 2017 or so. This system is less than 2 years old...

SO, HOW do I get the BIOS - the NEW BIOS - to see this 10TB HDD?

Your "removable carrier" has a limit on what size drive can work with it.
Something else that would be also questionable if it were me. I looked at the Z690 datasheet.. I read that as it would not recognize internal drives larger than 6gb. There may be some relationship to this limitation and why bios does not recognize an external drive of 10 gb, but I would check the datasheet of your "removable carrier" as it may be your culprit.
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glasskuter said:

Your "removable carrier" has a limit on what size drive can work with it.
Something else that would be also questionable if it were me. I looked at the Z690 datasheet.. I read that as it would not recognize internal drives larger than 6gb. There may be some relationship to this limitation and why bios does not recognize an external drive of 10 gb, but I would check the datasheet of your "removable carrier" as it may be your culprit.
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Click to expand...

I have a system with a Z690 chipset. (See my system #1.) It includes a 16TB HD for data, SATA interface. Previously, it had an 8TB drive, which I moved to system #2. I didn't have to change any BIOS settings to permit that.

I don't know what means "GracieAllen" is using with swappable drives, but I wonder whether it includes any electronics at all? I'd expect not, but I'm not confident in that.

My Asus motherboard has a provision to save settings to a USB flash drive. I use that when updating the firmware. The settings are complex enough that I'm happy to not have to recall them (or write them down).

I'm sorry that I can offer no suggestions as to why the PC isn't recognizing the drives.

@GracieAllen

Yes... the 4 pin white plastic connector is a Molex connector.
Manufacturers are phasing out Molex connectors. The reason: they are not mechanically stable.
In other words, the male and female pins can move a bit in the plastic housing.

This sometimes causes connection problems. One of the four male pins might be a bit lower than the others.
Or maybe it may be true of one or more of the female pins.

This causes connection problems sometimes. One pair (male and female) molex connectors may work fine, while one of those connectors mated with a different molex connector may not work.

I think you may have a problem similar to this. You "get" power when the 8TB is hooked up, but you may "not" be getting power when the 10TB is hooked up.

Thanks for the replies. I remember seeing that 6TB limit somewhere in the original data, but I was already using 8TB HDD for backups and it was never a problem. Once I had the BIOS updated (I THINK there's a method with the MSI board to store the changes so I don't have to relearn) and I could presume THAT wasn't the problem I started thinking about the HDD carrier.

I have two. The one IN the system is just a carrier with a door on the front. Slide the drive in, close the door and it pushes the drive onto the plugs. It uses the thin black plugs (SATA plugs). There's no electronic component I've seen, just plug it in like any SATA HDD and add the hard drive. NOTHING I've found so far will make it recognize the 10 TB HDD. Different cable, different SATA port, cajoling, nothing.

My SPARE carrier is a little older and still uses the molex plug - and yeah they're EVERYTHING you said! Always have been. To test it, I left it OUTSIDE the case (on the floor), connected it to an unused molex, plugged in the SATA data cable that it had, and shoved one of the 10TB drives in and it popped right up. I'm currently moving the backup data from the 8TB to the 10TB.

So, the one that was IN the system, and has been working since day 1, does NOT see the 10 TB HDD, and the older one that SHOULDN'T work (or maybe it should), is working FINE! I pulled the "new" carrier out of the system and swapped in the older one.

Once the backup gets done in another 9 or 10 hours, I'll put the new one on the floor and try a different power cable and another data cable and so on. Looking at the 2 devices, it makes absolutely NO sense that EITHER would care what size hard drive was in them - they're just dumb (no electronics) holders for the hard drive that can be removed. In THEORY, if I enabled the hot swap capability on that connection, I could swap them without shutting the system down, but I've never done that.

Thanks for the help. It got me rummaging in the right direction and it's now working.